3 AM
by Lucifer's Garden
Summary: For some reason, Nate finds it easier to face hordes of smugglers, pirates, war criminals, zombies, and giant Yeti monsters than to tell Elena what she means to him. Nate/Elena one shot


_Uncharted's_ Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher are © Naughty Dog and Sony Entertainment

Rated T for Nate's bad language and very mild sexual themes, but mostly this is just some good ol' fashioned sappy Nate/Elena fluff. I'm probably going to reread it all later and cringe at myself, but I couldn't help it! I had just woken up from a bad dream, it was 3 in the morning (funny how my circadian rhythms don't seem to mind getting disrupted for fanfiction, hmm?), I've been listening to love songs, it was raining, I'm stressed out from writing term papers – something had to give, people!

Enjoy! ;P

000

_Close your eyes  
Let me touch you now  
Let me give you something  
That is real  
Close the door  
Leave your fears behind  
Let me give you  
What you're giving me  
You are the only thing  
That makes me want to live at all  
When I am with you  
There's no reason to pretend that  
When I am with you  
I feel flames again  
Just put me inside you  
I would never ever leave  
Just put me inside you  
I would never ever leave_

"Flames" – VAST

_**3 AM**_

Giant fragments of centuries-old stone plummeted through the air and landed with bone-rattling impact on the worn flagstones, cracked through from invading weeds and vines. An earthquake raged underfoot, swaying the massive pillars as they groaned from the pressure of keeping the high-domed ceiling in place.

Through all of this, his eyes were fixed only on her as she stood with her back towards him, not ten feet ahead.

"Elena," he called. His voice sounded far away to his own ears.

No reaction. She was looking down at something in her hand.

He tried walking forward, and realized with a cold punch of dread that he couldn't move, couldn't even tear his eyes away from her to look down and see why.

"Elena!"

Slowly she turned around, still staring at whatever it was she was holding.

_Oh God, no, no no no no please . . . _

A grenade. A goddamn grenade with no pin and he didn't understand _why the fuck can't I move _–

And then Flynn was there, somewhere close by but out of sight, and the bastard was laughing. "Ladies first."

Guardians were closing in on them, coming out of nowhere, huge and bestial but screaming with something profoundly human inside of them . . .

She looked up at him, incomprehension in those blue eyes. "Four," was all she said. All she had time to say.

A rupture of light, then a deafening concussion and fire, so much fire, rushing towards him –

000

"_ELENA!_"

He shot upright in the dark, eyes wide and frantic, body scrambling completely separate from any coherent thought. He was already halfway off the mattress, sheets wrenched aside, one foot on the hardwood floor.

A voice, sharp with alarm, cut through the roar of blood pounding in his ears. "Nate, wake up. It's, it's ok– Nate! It's all right!" Hands descended on his shoulder, a woman's hands, small and warm, halting him in mid rush.

Heart racing, breath escaping in shallow bursts, he turned and searched the dark for the familiar contours of her face, unable to will himself into believing he would actually find it whole and alive and looking back at him – _she's here, oh thank you God, thank you Jesus, thank you –_

"You were dreaming," she murmured close to his ear, pulling him towards her. He complied mindlessly and let her guide his face to nestle against that warm, perfectly accommodating shoulder of hers. Totally enamoured, as always, with her disdain for perfumes and flowery scented lotions that he had come to associate with women. Just her, natural and clean and warm, swimming in that oversized t-shirt of his that she had taken to wearing at night and nothing else.

Still trembling, he dragged her into his lap into a fierce, devouring, _need to to feel every square inch of you _embrace. She obligingly wrapped her arms and legs around him in turn and the heat of her breath on his skin, cold and clammy with sweat, made something melt inside of him that he couldn't quite express.

Because she had almost died. Eight months ago, in that temple in Nepal, in fucking _Shambhala_, with Flynn's grenade, _miserable cocksucking bastard I'm glad you're dead_, but he had been so far away that he couldn't reach her in time, and how could anyone survive a blast like that –

She instinctively tightened her hold on him at that moment, as if knowing every thought swarming in his head and attempting to cinch them off. This wasn't the first time he had awoken in the middle of the night, crying out her name like he was right there all over again, back in the temple, watching her get nearly blown to shreds. She had healed up just fine, breezed through physiotherapy like a champion, and now there were hardly even any scars left over. Just tiny lines flecked on her forearms from when she had raised them to shield her face. Battle wounds, she called them, with no shortage of pride. He could barely stand to look at them sometimes.

_Four_, he had said, when she asked him to rank on a scale of 1 to 10 how scared he was that she was going to die. _Four._ A whole six less than clowns.

She could laugh about it because obviously he wasn't serious, but she had no idea how unserious he actually was. She had no idea because he even though he could shoot his way through a goddamn island of drug smuggling pirates and zombies, survive train derailments and guerilla warfare and hike through the Himalayas before taking on a pack of giant humanoid Yetis and an army eastern European terrorists – he was too much of a coward to tell her that losing her would be more than he could bear. That of all the things he'd faced in this ridiculous life of his, seeing a grenade nearly ripping her from him forever would have been the final straw for him. The one thing he couldn't survive.

"What do you need?" she whispered, calmly cupping his face in her hands. "What can I do? Tell me."

But she already knew.

He answered with an urgent, possessive kiss that robbed them both of air, arms very nearly crushing each other to pieces. She opened her mouth without hesitation and let him in, with all the fear and remorse and love that she knew he couldn't say in words just yet (ever). And when his fingers ducked under the hem of her shirt – his shirt, really – to slide it up over her head, leaving her bare and shivering at the magnitude of his need, she obeyed wordlessly.

It was over so unfairly fast, but then, that was always the way with them, wasn't it? Not for lack of desire and stamina, both of which they had in obscene abundance. It could last for hours, and in fact sometimes it did, but it was simply never enough. Especially when it was like this, just raw and messy and the basic, primeval giving of each other.

Calm now, sweating again and drained to the point of unconsciousness, he stared at her lying next to him in the dark. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest under the sheets, her damp disheveled hair spilled on the pillow beneath her, and marveled that he had ever made it through a night without her before. It didn't feel real, like it hadn't really been his life until she came along and turned every damn thing upside down, made it more than just about him. Made everything scarier, more wonderful, more worth fighting and killing for and, yes, dying for.

The smart thing to do would have been to wake her up and tell her all of this, even though it was 3 am and he had just ravaged her within an inch of her life and she would probably be too exhausted to keep her eyes open for longer than five seconds. But it was all there inside him, right on the tip of his tongue, burned in his eyes and already itching in the tips of his fingers for a second time. She deserved to know, and she was always so open and honest with him about these things even though he couldn't fathom what he ever did to deserve someone like her to feel this way for someone like him. And there was always the chance that something could happen to her again, or to him one day, and she would never hear from his lips just how badly he needed her, how he found indescribable joy in everything she did.

There would never be a better time, or a more perfect moment than now. He would never feel so brave and vulnerable at the same time, so at peace. Tomorrow he would wake up and everything would be back to normal, smiles and jokes and banter, off on the next wild treasure hunt, maybe with not with zombies or Yetis this time but most definitely with guns (knowing him) –

_Do it. Tell her, you idiot._

But he didn't.

Instead he leaned in, planted a weightless kiss on her temple, curled up behind her, and promptly fell asleep – this time, deep and dreamless.

Because she already knew.


End file.
